As processors increase their processing capabilities, one important consideration is power consumption. For example, in mobile computing devices that rely on battery power, it is very important to reduce power consumption to allow for the device to operate while mobile. Power consumption is also important for non-mobile computing devices as excess power consumption may increase costs (e.g., due to additional power usage, increasing cooling requirements, etc.), shorten component life, limit locations at which a device may be used, etc.
Hard disk drives provide a relatively low cost storage solution and are used in many computing devices to provide non-volatile storage. Disk drives however use relatively a lot of power when compared to flash memory (which can also provide a non-volatile storage solution) since a disk drive needs to spin its disks at a relatively high speed and move disk heads relative to the spinning disks to read/write data. All this physical movement generates heat and increases power consumption. To this end, higher end computing devices are migrating towards utilizing flash memory devices that are non-volatile. Also, some flash memory devices may provide higher access speeds and data transfer rates than hard disk drives.